Surely As Birds Fly

by H.L. Hix

The intelligent, eloquent, and luminous poems in H L Hix' third full-length collection, exceed the amazing promise and scope of his earlier collections of poems. In the three sequences that make up the book, Hix negotiates the cost of knowledge, eros, and dignity, the burden of lamentation and destiny, the mercurial border between matter and spirit. One will not only admire the lucidity of these poems, but will delight at how they weave the language of science, philosophy, and scripture into a voice singular in its complexity and urgency, a voice beyond innocence, a voice tempered in the forge of history.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2002

About the author

H. L. Hix has published an anthology, Wild and Whirling Words: A Poetic Conversation (2004), and eight books of poetry and literary criticism with Etruscan, including Shadows of Houses (2005), Chromatic (2006), God Bless: A Political/Poetic Discourse (2007), Legible Heavens (2008), Incident Light (2009), First Fire, Then Birds (2010), As Easy As Lying: Essays on Poetry (2002), and Lines of Inquiry (2011). He has two more books forthcoming from Etruscan, As Much As, If Not More Than (2013) and I’m Here to Learn to Dream in Your Language (2014).

In addition to having been a finalist for the National Book Award for Chromatic, his awards include the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Peregrine Smith Award, and fellowships from the NEA, the Kansas Arts Commission, and the Missouri Arts Council. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin, taught at Kansas City Art Institute, and was an administrator at The Cleveland Institute of Art, before accepting his current position as professor in the Creative Writing MFA at the University of Wyoming. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin and at Shanghai University.

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my least favorite Hix book I've read so far. The first section, though following his usual obsessive organization by having every poem named "Lament for the (body part)" (which I like; one reason I read Hix is for the mathematical precision he brings to his organization), contains poems that could have been written by lots of people. That is, they weren't distinctly Hixian.

The second section, with each poem named after a town in the previous Soviet bloc, I liked better. Probably the best section in this book.(In his introduction, Hix says three parts of this section are a loose rewriting of other people's poems; those are the few poems NOT named after towns. Hmmmm.)

Then the third section I had very mixed feelings about. It was about 10 siblings, each named after a place in Alaska, and each featured in a poem with an outcome you could see coming after the first or second poem. This sequence was just too contrived; that could have been avoided by not having the "victims" be 10 siblings--but then the parent portions of the poems wouldn't have been so cohesive. However, my own family has a tragedy in Alaska, so despite the forced tone of these poems, they worked for me due to personal circumstances. Otherwise, I think they wouldn't have. This would have made an interesting short story though, more compelling than a poem sequence, I think. On the other hand, I'm never going to forget this series, so in that sense, it's done its work.

[Christina Borgoyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection of poems, indeed.